Coming of Age on Zoloft : How Antidepressants Cheered Us Up, Let Us Down, and Changed Who We Are

When Katherine Sharpe arrived at her college health center with an age-old complaint, a bad case of homesickness, she received a thoroughly modern response: a twenty-minute appointment and a prescription for Zoloft—a drug she would take for the next ten years. This outcome, once unlikely, is now alarmingly common. Twenty-five years after Prozac entered the marketplace, 10 percent of Americans over the age of six use an SSRI antidepressant. In __Coming of Age on Zoloft__, Sharpe blends deeply personal writing, thoughtful interviews, and historical context to achieve an unprecedented portrait of the antidepressant generation. She explores questions of identity that arise for people who start medication before they have an adult sense of self. She asks why some individuals find a diagnosis of depression reassuring, while others are threatened by it. She presents, in young people's own words, their intimate and complicated relationships with their medication. And she weighs the cultural implications of America's biomedical approach to moods. A compelling and troubling exploration of a generation raised on antidepressants, and a book that combines expansive interviews with substantive research-based reporting, Coming of Age on Zoloft is a vitally important and immediately engrossing study of one of America's most pressing and omnipresent issues: our growing reliance on prescription drugs. Katherine Sharpe, the former editor of Seed magazine's ScienceBlogs.com, addresses the questions that millions of young men and women are struggling with. “Where does my personality end and my prescription begin?” “Do I have a disease?” “Can I get better on my own?” Combining stout scientific acumen with first-person experience gained through her own struggle with antidepressants, Sharpe leads the reader through a complex subject, a guide towards a clearer future for all. Like many of her generation, the author grew up on antidepressants. In this book, she tells the story of the societal and scientific perfect storm that led to the Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, or SSRIs explosion in the 1990s, delves into her own drug experience, and interviews dozens of her peers about their relationships to SSRIs. The Diagnosis -- A Short History Of Medication -- Starting Out -- Decade Of The Brain -- I've Never Been To Me -- Two Red Chairs -- Flight Of The Dodo Bird : Evaluating Therapy -- Quitting -- Converts -- The Next Generation -- Coming Of Age. Katherine Sharpe. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 301-314).